


In Which No Woman Ever Holds the Same Shrimp Twice

by Welcoming_Disaster



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, F/F, Pet Pigs, Philosophy, Set between s1 and s2, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 08:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16657480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welcoming_Disaster/pseuds/Welcoming_Disaster
Summary: The Good Place changes all of them. It's not supposed to.





	In Which No Woman Ever Holds the Same Shrimp Twice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freneticfloetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/gifts).



> Written (loosely) for the prompt, "Unforeseen side-effect of hundreds of years in The Bad Place: one seemingly small but actually crucial thing has changed for each of them. Eleanor hates shrimp, Chidi doesn't hate the boots, Tahani's Team Kanye instead of Team Taylor (though she'd never tell her so to her face), Jason is no longer a Pikachu person (Jigglypuff FTW!). It's no wonder they start to feel like something's wrong."
> 
> aaa this was a lot of fun! first time doing yuletide or writing for this fandom... I hope you all enjoy, regardless! 
> 
> See end notes for detailed warnings. They will very minor spoilers. It's also a very minor warning.

Here’s the thing; Eleanor has always loved shrimp. She wouldn’t go as far as to say, though, that she ever cared to learn the details of shrimp farming.

“You remove their eyes?” She asked Michael, flipping the little razor blade over in her hands. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing one properly ought to be doing, if this was heaven.

“The eyestalks,” Michael corrected her, “don’t worry. They aren’t really alive, they’re just constructs of shrimp.”

Eleanor inched her razor blade a little closer.

“Then again,” Michael added, helpfully, “they do feel pain. And hunger. And the urge to mate. Really, functionally indistinguishable from shrimp.”

Eleanor put her blade back down. The shrimp wiggled in her hand, poking her with its sharp little feet. She dropped it back into the tank and watched it swim away. “You _sure_ I’ve got to do this?”

“Well, Eleanor, I know how important sustainability was to you,” Michael intoned, “twenty-three years, and you never ate something you didn’t collect yourself. I thought providing a larger variety of options of things you could obtain that way would help you achieve this here, as well. But, if you aren’t feeling up to it….”

 _Orderpizzaorderpizzaorderpizza,_ Eleanor thought she must be radiating it by then, _can Janet do pizza?_

“...we can go back to the garden.”

Eleanor kept her groan back, but just barely. “Summer squash.” She said, flatly, “my favorite food.”

Michael grinned, clapping his hands together, “There’s the attitude! Let’s go!”

“That’s alright,” Eleanor stood, pushing off the walls of the huge tank. There was something calming, she thought, to the gliding movements of the shrimp inside, “I can find my way back.”

Heaven, apparently, was composed of neighborhoods, but bizarrely enough, nearly their entire neighborhood was composed of one apartment building. It was the same apartment building that she had lived in right before she died. She was sure, privately, that this was her corrupting influence on the place; no one would say so to Michael’s face, but she knew no one was a big fan. Her soulmate frequently complained about the noise coming from whatever the couple upstairs was doing (which Eleanor maintained, stubbornly, was orgies). The couple directly across from them grumbled about having to get dressed every night in order to take their stupid little dog out to pee. Most people, it seemed, were used to living in houses. There was only one person she could think of that liked the arrangements.

And that person was currently frowning at a doorstep of _Hot Fruit_.

“Chidi!” She called, speeding up to catch up to him, “how’s the cartography thing going, bud?”

“Eleanor,” he sounded more relieved than she had ever heard a man sound before, and that included the time that she was eighteen and had a pregnancy scare with her then-boyfriend, Danny-with-the-braces. “Do you know how to get home?”

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p,’ “say, though, you didn’t happen to starve to death the first time you went to IKEA?”

“I never went to IKEA,” Chidi said, “environmentally, I just couldn’t justify it. Not to mention the horse meatballs--”

“You like horses?” Eleanor interrupted, falling into step with him. Better than learning why every single place she went shopping was ‘unjustifiable.’

“Well,” said Chidi, and proceeded to detail a more complicated relationship with horses than Eleanor would think someone would be capable of.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” she said, after perhaps a minute, “a horse slept with your girlfriend then gave you a million dollars. We don’t have to keep talking about this.”

Chidi looked miffed. Eleanor wasn’t exactly sure when, but she had become kind a sucker for the sad-puppy look, so she had to add, “...because I’d love to talk to you about, um, ethics.”

He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. Eleanor shifted, slightly, and continued. “No, seriously, I was kind of wondering about this whole person thing. Like, outside of a sense of direction, invitations to cool kid parties, and a significantly better music taste, what makes me different from you? That sort of thing.”

“You’re asking me to define personal identity.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“That’s a little out of the scope of what we’ve been talking about. What brought this on?”

“Well, I was just thinking about it,” Eleanor said, “and I used to love shrimp, y’know? Every Friday night, I’d break out the margarita mix, microwave a bag of those motherforkers, and go to town--”

“Hold on, did you just say you _microwaved--”_

“Focus on the point, nerd, I used to love shrimp. But y’know Michael’s whole sustainability thing? He had me go shrimp farming today. And I came in, I smelled it, and I realized I didn’t want any. At all. I mean, it’s not even the killing them thing. They’re ocean insects. I don’t care.”

Chidi lifted his eyebrows again.

“Okay, I care a little. He wanted me to cut out their eyeballs, and, c’mon, that’s horrible. Anyways, I got to thinking about it, and there’s a lot of things like that. Just little things. I can’t listen to Ariana Grande anymore. Couldn’t tell you why. Hate the name Trevor. Somehow thought peanut butter on fish would be a good idea idea last night.”

Going fishing had been calming. The disaster in the kitchen, not so much.

“Where do you think that’s coming from?” Chidi asked, a slightly odd tone in his voice.

“The whole being dead thing? The lessons? I was actually hoping you’d tell me, man,” Eleanor said, with a shrug, “point is, I barely feel like the same person anymore.”

“Well, you see,” Chidi said, “that’s not the kind of question I can give a straightforward answer to. That’s the kind of thing philosophers have struggled with for ages. There’s the theory of bodily substance, which basically says that we’re only the same people as long as we remain in the same bodies. This would -- well, it would mean that no one here is the same person they were when they alive, anymore.

“We can come back to our old friend, Locke, here, as well. He thought that identity came from the psychological continuity of consciousness -- that is, that preserving the linear narrative of your memories, your experiences, is more important to remaining who you are than the way your body may change, or how your likes or dislikes shift.

“Then, there’s Hume’s bundle theory of the self. It’s a little like Buddhism -- you might able to learn more if you spend some time with the monks here, actually. Hume believed, to put it simply, that an object, or a person, basically consists only of the properties it possesses at the current moment, meaning that continuous personal identity is an illusion. Basically, you’re no longer the same person as you were before as soon as something about you changes. I think you’d be able able to see a contradiction here, though, that he might not have been aware of.”  

Eleanor paused to think about it. It took her a moment, “you’re saying that if they’re able to sort us into _bad people_ and _good people_ here, then there _is_ something fundamentally the same about us our whole lives?”

“Not necessarily, but I think it’s an important consideration. You know what I find interesting about the good place, though?”

“Hm?”

“The whole idea of here relies on the concept of a static, unchanging identity. Soulmates, for instance. I don’t _need_ to change in order to be the perfect person for Vicky. She just suits me exactly as I am now. And if I were to change, she would no longer be the person I needed. Same for the apartment. It’s exactly suited to who I was as a person, right at the moment I died.”

“Sounds nice.” Eleanor held the door open for him as they entered the building.

“I don’t know if it is,” he said, “we went on a rowboat ride yesterday. Bottle of wine, my favorite book of poetry, way out on the lake.”

“Yeah, sounds right up your alley.”

“It wasn’t. It felt like the kind of thing I should be liking, but it wasn’t. I think she could tell.” Chidi reached over, running a hand over his face, “for once, I can say I feel exactly the way you do, Eleanor.”

“Hey,” Eleanor said, reaching over to put a hand on his shoulder, “you’ll figure it out, man. You’ve got, what, eternity?”

He smiled, glancing down, and reached into his pocket for his keys. “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

And with that, he turned into the apartment he shared with Vicky, and Eleanor turned to head to the roof garden. Often, she wouldn’t be the only one there; many of the residents tended to the plants, though almost none of them seemed to like the kinds of things she did. She wished, often, that she could just ask Janet to bring some take-out, but, ostensibly in order to account for real-Eleanor’s dietary preferences, Janet only took her to collect ingredients when asked.

When she got up to the roof, she could see a man standing by the jalapeno peppers. It took her a second to recognize him; he was one of the only people who didn’t live in the building.

“Hey, um, J--” She shifted from foot to foot, trying to remember his name, “John-june?”

He bowed to her. She gave him an awkward wave.

“Right,” she said, “you don’t talk, huh? Whatcha doing here?”

He held up one of the peppers.

“Yeah, fair enough. Those are good,” she said, “you know, Chidi said you might teach me something about identity. Like… who we are, as people. In Buddhism.”

He blinked at her, owlishly. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was confused. Then, though, reached over, put a hand on her shoulder, and handed her the pepper. And, maintaining eye contact with her, he sneezed.

“...Thanks?” She asked, looking the pepper over. “Should, I, um, doing something with this?”

He stared her in the eyes again, and swiftly took the pepper back.

“You’re trying to say all things are temporary,” she guessed, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, “Like what Chidi was saying… there’s nothing that we’ll have forever, even here?”

He nodded, and then sneezed again.

“There’s a cat here a lot,” she said, “are you allergic to cats? I know you wouldn’t think you’d still be allergic, here, but I still get my period, sooo…”

She shrugged, a ‘what are you gonna do’ kind of gesture.

He put a hand on her shoulder, stuck the pepper in his pocket (which, she noticed, was already somewhat full), and turned to leave.

“...Thanks, I guess,” said Eleanor, watching him go. If she had watched even a moment longer, she’d have seen him rub at his nose with the pepper covered hand.

It didn’t take her a long time to gather what she needed. Weirdly enough, she was kind of warming up to the idea of cooking squash and tomatoes again -- there were things she wanted to try, from the way Wednesday’s meal turned out, and, as much as she wouldn’t admit it, there was something comfortable to the routine.

Carrying what she had gathered in down, Eleanor journeyed back downstairs and unlocked her own door, slipping inside. Immediately, she was greeted by a loud oinking. Sir Francis, the first animal of Michael’s sustainability initiative, bounced around her like an excited puppy.

“Hi, buddy,” she said, kneeling down to scratch him on the head, “how’s your day going? Bet no one tried to get you to cut out any shrimp eyes, huh? Didn’t face any complicated moral dilemmas? Didn’t have to lie to anyone about who you are?”

He oinked at her. Must be nice to be a pig.

She didn’t see any indications that her supposed soulmate was home, but when she passed through the living room, she saw Tahani curled up on the sofa, makeup mirror balanced between her knees, carefully applying something to her eyes. They seemed red. Eleanor took a second to drink it in; it was rare to see Tahani in any kind of state of undress, with her makeup even a little off, showing any sign of vulnerability. There was a sort of glee to it. No more perfect than the rest of us, Tahani, Eleanor thought to herself.

Out loud, she said, “you’ve got mascara on your cheek.”

“Oh,” said Tahani, going for a tissue, “and now _that’s_ ruined too. Dreadful, positively dreadful.”

Well, it sounded like Eleanor wasn’t the only one experiencing trouble in paradise. “Bad day?” She asked, noncommittally.

“Nina and Martin kept making noise,” Tahani said, motioning upstairs, “so I went upstairs to ask them to keep it down.”

“Was there an orgy?” Eleanor said, “I’m telling you, they swing, and--”

“Will you let me get to my point? I went upstairs, and Nina recognized me, remembered she knew me from somewhere, when we were alive, and, and,” Tahani hiccuped, and blew her nose loudly in the tissue. Up close, Eleanor could smell, faintly, wine on her breath.

“And?” She prodded, sitting down across from her and putting her bag of vegetables on the coffee table.

“And it was for Kamilah!” Tahani pulled out magazine, shoving the cover into into Eleanor’s face. “When she was v-voted ‘Best Hair and Makeup in the History of Women.’”

“Aw,” Eleanor wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, “did she teach you?”

Tahani shook her head, furiously, and then hiccuped again, “I used to do her makeup,” she declared. “When we were kids. And then, and then she had friends over… and you know what I heard one of them say?”

Eleanor lifted an eyebrow.

“She said, ‘nice of you to indulge your sister like that.’ Indulge! Can you imagine it, Eleanor? The nerve?”

“That sucks,” Eleanor tried. She didn’t know what she should be saying -- on one hand, she didn’t want to feed Tahani’s ego, but on the other, it didn’t seem proper to kick her while she was down. And, yeah, maybe she cared. The same as she did for ocean insects.

“Dreadful, it was dreadful. You know what I did?”

“What?”

“I didn’t talk to her for two years after that. Served her right. And, you know, in that time? She started and finished at Oxford, spent six months making her first hit jazz album, got elected for the first two times, a-and she got the award. Once she stopped _indulging_ me. What nonsense!”

“I think your makeup’s really good,” Eleanor said, cautiously.

“That’s what she said, too,” Tahani stopped dabbing at her face with the tissue and reached for a brush, “she never let me come near her face again, though, not after that comment…”

“Hey,” said Eleanor, “you know what? You can do my makeup. Do you wanna do my makeup?”

That seemed to throw Tahani off the self-pity tirade she was on for a moment, but she bounced back easily enough, “oh, I couldn’t possibly! No, better to acknowledge one’s misgivings than to be indulged, like a, like a child…”  

“No, seriously,” Eleanor leaned forward, sitting on the very edge of the coffee table now, “Do my makeup. We’ll go anywhere, after that, and, you’ll see, I’ll get more compliments on it than I ever do, and you can feel good about. You wanna do that?”

Tahani blinked at her, silent for a good ten seconds. “...Yes,” she admitted, after a moment, “horribly.”

What Eleanor did not consider when she thought of that plan, of course, was how ridiculously erotic it was to have someone else doing her makeup. Tahani scoffed at her makeup purse when she offered it to her, going as far as to ask who “Mable-line” was, and then called Janet to ask for brands Eleanor only barely recognized in her skin tone. She’d had Eleanor move closer, after that, and leaned in, her breath warming Eleanor’s skin. Her fingers brushed over Eleanor’s cheeks, the ridge of her nose, just under her eyes, heavenly soft (heh). She was full of intense concentration, the same desire to prove herself, her brown eyes focused intently on Eleanor’s face, pupils blown up. Her own lips parted when she applied Eleanor’s lipgloss, movements gentle and careful, and--

Yeah, okay. Eleanor was bad at this platonic soulmates thing. Tahani had made it clear, when they first met, that she liked men, and-- and Eleanor wasn’t going to make this something it wasn’t, even if it was kind of killing her (again).

“When I was fourteen,” Tahani said, hiccuping again, “I-I told my mother that I thought I liked women, too,” she paused, carefully tracing the curl of Eleanor’s lower lip, “and she just said, she said, ‘no, you don’t,’ and that was the end of it.”

She paused, then, waiting for something, and Eleanor took it for the permission it was, surging up to kiss her on the lips, ruining both of their freshly applied lip glosses. Tahani’s lips were soft, so soft, softer than any of the men that Eleanor had kissed and the majority of the women, too. She tasted like wine, and, up close, Eleanor could smell her conditioner, too, a warm, spicy smell. Tahani gasped, a small, long sound, like she was letting out a breath she’d been holding for too long, and pulled Eleanor off the coffee table and onto the couch, onto her lap.

They didn’t hook up that night. Eleanor sucked hickeys into Tahani’s neck like they teenagers in the back of the car after prom night, and Tahani’s hands spent an inordinate amount of time resting on Eleanor’s ass, over her jeans, but in the end, they were tangled up, fully clothed, on the couch, warm and content. Sir Francis came up to cuddle with them, and neither had the mental fortitude to tell him to get off the furniture.

And Eleanor imagined how it might be from them on, imagined how each one of them could come to build a life together in the apartment. She thought about how it would feel to discover every long, soft inch of Tahani’s body, how they would dress Sir Francis up in ridiculous outfits for Christmas, how each one of them could come to smooth out the other’s edges. How, if both of them put in the work and swallowed their pride, they might just come to complete each other.

And how different they would end up at the end of it. Not just her, but the both of them. “Tahani?” She asked, quietly.

“Mm?” Tahani’s head was buried in her chest. She didn’t bother looking up.

“I don’t think this is the good place.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: there is a brief discussion about shrimp farming which is relatively gross and may constitute a discussion of violence to an animal. No shrimp actually get hurt. The shrimp present are also not real shrimp, but Good Place-shrimp (like the s1 dog). They also do not get hurt.


End file.
